


Not the End of the Story

by AstroGirl



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Episode Tag, F/M, Presumed Dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-17
Updated: 2013-02-17
Packaged: 2017-11-29 16:02:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/688813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstroGirl/pseuds/AstroGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It enters his mind that the queen might be lying. But in his heart, he never doubts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not the End of the Story

**Author's Note:**

> This is a missing scene/episode tag for "Skin Deep," but contains spoilers up through... Well, let's say "The Outsider," just to be on the safe side. Written for Trope Bingo for the prompt "presumed dead."

It enters his mind that the queen might be lying. Of course it does. She is a manipulative creature, after all, molded in his own image. But in his heart he never doubts, not for a moment. Happy endings are not for the likes of him, not in this realm, and everything he does out of love inevitably grows into something cruel. He should have come to expect it by now. He _has_ come to expect it. 

But, oh, how that thought still has the ability to make his coward's heart cringe. For every night when he lies awake imagining his tearful reconciliation with Bae -- he's long since lost the capacity for mortal sleep, but he still likes to believe that he can dream -- some annoyingly realistic part of his mind always pictures, instead, a son who is anything but glad at his return, one more likely to kill him than forgive him. He thinks accepting that possibility is perhaps the only truly brave thing he's ever done. It may be a poor bravery next to Belle's, next to _anyone's_ , but he clings to it, nonetheless. Well, really, what else does he have?

Less than he could have had, probably, and that hurts far more than anything not involving Baelfire ought to.

The worst thing is that if he's honest -- and he likes to think he is an honest monster, one who misleads but does not lie -- he is, in some hateful corner of his heart, almost relieved by the news of Belle's death. It means he will never be faced with such an impossible choice again. He can be certain of that, because men like him aren't handed second chances. Men like him have to sell their souls for second chances, and there's very little of his left to barter with.

More than anything it's that self-knowledge, and the old, familiar self-loathing that goes with it, that works to transmute the shame and guilt and despair inside him into anger, as easy as straw transmutes into gold. And the easiest thing to do with anger, of course, is to direct it outward, into punishment. Into revenge. When Rumplestiltskin becomes angry, he smashes things. Because he _can_.

He has a perfect justification, of course. Or believes he does. After all, no one cheats on a deal with him. _No one._ Belle was to be his forever, and if he wished to give her her freedom, or to be done with her, that is _his_ business. His, and, since he'd somehow proven incapable of wanting power over her, her own. But her life and her freedom were _not_ her father's to take, not under the terms of the deal. And so he returns the ogres, returns them tenfold, riled up with fresh grievances he has subtly introduced to their minds (or, at least, as subtly as is possible with ogres). 

He'll regret that, later, for the sake of the girl who sold herself into slavery to prevent it. There's a long, long list of things he's done in his life that he should regret, and a very short list of things he actually _does_ regret, and that will be a line that appears on both. Believing Regina will be another. But that will be much later, in another life. For now, he makes his choices. 

And, elsewhere, Belle sits patiently, a book on her lap that she's persuaded a nicer-than-he-looks castle guard to give her, and plans for the day when she'll help him make the right ones.


End file.
